[OS X TeX] Need help collaborating with Windows user

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 16.03.2010 um 07:19 schrieb John B. Thoo:

>> Direct PDF output is now state of the "black art" (German saying).
>> Packages like epstopdf allow inclusion of EPS graphics files which  
>> are
>> actually converted to PDF with Ghostscript. So Ghostscript needs to  
>> be
>> installed. The direct convertor is pdflatex. See: texdoc pdftex.
>
> Does this mean using "pdflatex", e.g.?

Yes.

>  I presume that would output a PDF file; what do I use for a viewer  
> (on X-Windows, e.g., but not necessarily) while working?

Xpdf, TeXworks, Acrobat/Adobe Reader, Evince, Sumatra? – there are  
enough! (And I'm on Mac OS X.)

>  I tend to latex and then view after every few paragraphs--- 
> sometimes after one or two lines---and, as I mentioned, I currently  
> use in X-Windows vi to edit my files, then "latex", and then view  
> the output using xdvi.

TeXworks is a TeX editor plus viewer, based on libpoppler (xpdf). GNU  
Emacs has a native LaTeX environment and the augmented AUCTeX. The  
latter behaves quite optimised.


> I looked at "texdoc inputenc", but it's a bit above me.  What do  
> using these two packages actually do for the user?  Why is using  
> them better than not?

The TeX distributions have a silent agreement on the default input  
encoding they use. You've already seen that a dozen or more exist.  
This makes interchange complicated when on one system x means x and on  
another system u. When using UTF-8 encoded documents one single  
character is encoded as up to four bytes – or up to four 8-bit  
characters. TeX and editors need to know about the relation of likely  
unrelated byte streams and what they actually represent.

>> \begin{document}
>>
>> \ifpdf
>>  \begin{pdfdisplay}
>>
>> [snip, snip]
>>
>> \else
>>  \begin{pspicture}(4,3)
>>
>
> Wow!  Thanks for the instructions and examples.  Does this mean I  
> need to have two sets of instructions for all my pspictures?

In my bad example. If you'd visit the web page Michael Sharpe gave  
you'll see the auto-pst-pdf example: one text for both TeX engines.


>> When working with PSTricks, with latex+dvips or with pdflatex, you
>> have to use the option -shell-escape.
>
> So, e.g.,
>
>  pdflatex -shell-escape foo.tex

Yes, as the web site recommends.

--
Greetings

   Pete

Think of XML as Lisp for COBOL programmers.
				- Tony-A (some guy on /.)